Colin Beard

Over his long career, Colin Beard has worked in many fields of photography always at the highest level. He began photography in the mid-1960s as a founding member of Australia’s first Rock’n Roll Magazine, ‘Go-Set’ and subsequently worked in UK and USA. For many years he has been one of Australia’s most prominent Fashion and Advertising Photographers, working on many major national and international accounts for which he earned many photography awards world-wide. He freelanced extensively for numerous leading fashion magazines (‘Vogue’, ‘Dolly’, ‘Cleo’, ‘Pol’) producing numerous covers and fashion spreads.

He began teaching in 1977 as a founding member of the staff of ‘The Sydney College of the Arts’ where he designed and introduced undergraduate and post-graduate courses in Photography and in Design. He later joined the staff of the Design Faculty of The University of Technology, Sydney, again introducing many new courses in Photography. At UTS he was instrumental in the development of the digital photography studios and in the conversion of the design programme to digital technology.

Alongside his academic activities, he is a highly regarded Photojournalist, working extensively for The Sydney Morning Herald, The Bulletin magazines and he was the first photographer to be commissioned for Australian Geographic magazine. He has produced a series of large format books with writer, James Cowan, including ‘The Mountain Men’, The River People,’ Starlight’s Trail’ and ‘Sacred Places in Australia’ plus other books including ‘Women of Power’ with Gael Knepfer, ‘Australia the Beautiful’, with James Granville and ‘Australia the Beautiful; Cookbook’.

He was selected as one of the 100 international photographers representing Australia in the book ‘A Day in the Life of Australia’. His photographs have been exhibited widely including solo exhibitions in all the major cities of Australia and at Regional Galleries. He has also held solo exhibitions in Beijing (China), Cortona(Italy) and in London(UK). He has delivered guest lectures at universities throughout Australia and in the UK and Italy.

Throughout 2001/2002 he was principal teacher for the Australian Geographic Photography Workshops in Sydney. He has several book projects ready for publication with T&G Publishing - ‘Sulle Tracce di San Francesco’; following the footsteps of Francis of Assisi in photographs and text - Rock’n’Roll Odyssey; a journey through the popular music of England and USA in 1967(photos and text) - ‘Landscape, Culture and Myth in The Yorkshire Dales’; an intimate look at the fading mono-agricultural communities in a small region in the north of England (photographs and text).